Japan Rejects South Korea Offer to Resolve Forced Labor Dispute
Japan's Abe to Skip Summit With South Korea's Moon, Reports Japan’s Sankei
(Bloomberg) -- Japan rejected a South Korean proposal for a joint compensation fund to resolve a dispute over colonial-era forced labor claims, in the latest sign of strain between the two U.S. allies.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday it was willing to consider diplomatic talks about compensation for Koreans forced to work for Japanese companies before and during World War II. The offer was made on the condition that Japan accepted the ministry’s proposal that companies from both countries make contributions to a fund.
Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that the plan “would not rectify the breach of international law and therefore would not be a resolution to this problem. ”
The statements came hours after the Sankei newspaper reported that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had decided not to meet South Korean President Moon Jae-in on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Osaka. The move was due to the lack of progress on the issue that Japan sees as settled under a 1965 treaty, the Sankei reported, without saying where it got its information.
Long-fraught relations between the two U.S. allies have soured in recent months as a series of South Korean courts ordered Japanese companies to pay compensation for Koreans conscripted into work for Japan’s imperial war machine. The dispute has complicated U.S. attempts to coordinate a response to nuclear and missile threats from North Korea.
Abe decided against meeting Moon after South Korea didn’t meet a June 18 deadline to respond to Japan’s requests for arbitration to resolve compensation disputes, the Sankei said. The report came nine days before Japan holds the annual Group of 20 gathering of leaders of the world’s biggest economies, when the host nation’s leader usually meets one-on-one with visiting counterparts.
Colonial Rule
“Nothing has been decided,” Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Natsuko Sakata said Wednesday in response to a question about the meeting. South Korea’s presidential office said arrangements for G-20 meetings remained under discussion.
Japan has said that all claims relating to the 1910-45 colonial period were decided under the 1965 treaty that normalized ties and states that matters of compensation are “settled completely and finally.” Moon argues that the treaty doesn’t prevent Koreans from suing Japanese firms and that the court decisions should be respected.
Moon’s government has also rejected Japan’s $9 million fund for Korean women trafficked to Japan’s Imperial Army brothels across Asia, which was agreed under his predecessor in a deal meant to bring wrangling over that issue to an end.
Japan has been looking for a resolution on the forced labor cases by invoking treaty arbitration provisions for matters that can’t be settled through diplomatic channels. Kenji Kanasugi, director-general of the ministry’s Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, called in an official from the South Korean embassy Wednesday to convey Japan’s disappointment over what Tokyo saw as South Korea’s failure to meet the deadline and to continue to press for arbitration.
President Donald Trump will be in Osaka for the G-20 that starts June 28 and was expected to visit South Korea after the meeting. But it was unclear whether U.S. leader might use the gathering to get the two American allies to patch up the dispute.
There’s little political incentive for either Moon or Abe to climb down -- a poll published last week found the proportion of Japanese with a positive view of South Korea had fallen to a record low of 20%. The share of South Koreans who saw Japan positively rose to 31.7%.
To contact the reporters on this story: Isabel Reynolds in Tokyo at ireynolds1@bloomberg.net;Jihye Lee in Seoul at jlee2352@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Jon Herskovitz
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